PROFESSIONAL ETHICS AND PRACTICES - COLUMN 183
Topical Index-Table of Contents to the Professional Ethics and Practices Columns
Compiled by David M. Abbott, Jr., CPG-04570 5055 Tamarac Street, Denver, CO 80238 303-394-0321,
dmageol@msn.com
Rock-to-metal ratio: useful or not?
On May 4, 2022, the US Geological Survey and Apple released “Rock-to- metal ratio: a foundational metric for understanding mine wastes” in a spe- cial issue of Environmental Science & Technology,
https://doi.org/10.1021/acs. est.1c07875. “The ‘rock-to-metal ratio’ indicates how much ore and waste rock must be mined, moved, and processed to produce a refined unit of a mineral commodity. Data on the quantities of ore mined and waste rock removed during mining and processing was not previous- ly known on a global level and are crucial to understanding the future supply of these minerals and the potential envi- ronmental impacts from mining them. … The authors used the most current data available to determine the rock-to- metal ratio of 25 of the most commonly used mineral commodities. The ratio they developed considers various mining factors, such as ore grades and recovery yields, to estimate the amount of ore and waste rock produced at more than 1,900 mining operations worldwide.”
While the rock-to-metal ratio may be a new metric to the general public, it is no secret in the mining industry. The ore grades quoted for mineral deposit estimates make the ratio fairly clear. The grade of some minerals is quoted in percent while gold, the platinum group elements, and others have grades quoted in parts per million (1 ppm = 1 gram per metric tonne). Iron ore has a rock-to- metal ratio of 9-to1 while gold has one of the highest ratios at about 3,000,000- to-1, or 3 metric tonnes of ore and waste are moved and processed to produce one gram of gold or a grade of 0.3 ppm Au.
The USGS & Apple rock-to-metal ratio study notes several special case minerals stemming from a variety of factors. For example, tantalum, tin, and tungsten, for which significant amounts of annual worldwide production are produced by small-scale or artisanal
www.aipg.org
mining of enriched placer deposits. Approximately 80% of primary vanadi- um is produced from coproducts of vana- diferous titanomagnetite ores recovered from vanadium-rich steel slags. Gallium is a coproduct of processing bauxite (alu- minum) and zinc ores. Silver is usually recovered as a byproduct of lead-zinc, gold, or copper mining and processing.
The rock-to-metal ratio study believes that “The rock-to-metal ratio can also provide companies an additional way to quantify the benefits of recycling by showing how much waste removal and ore mining could be avoided by recycling these materials.” Unfortunately, the ability to recycle metals varies consid- erably. Lead-acid batteries are easy to recycle and have been recycled for years. Recovering gold from used elec- tronics does occur but recovering the neodymium from hard drive magnets is a very different matter.
The USGS & Apple rock-to-metal ratio study may be an eye-opener for some. But not for those in the minerals business.
Sampling on or near Native American lands
The discussion of “Indian law and ESG governance: geoscientists are likely 182 is related to this topic. Anna Sut- ton, Mem-2528, attended an AGI Di- versity conference where sampling on or near Native American lands was a dis- cussion item. Chris Keane of AGI gave me the name of Hannah L. Hensel, PhD candidate at the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Univer- on the topic. Hensel provided the follow- ing information on the topic.
Native American lands exist in geo- logical areas of interest, both academic and commercial, and are regulated by laws at the Tribal nation, state, and fed- eral levels. Further, a lack of knowledge
among geologists about the history of stealing natural resources from Indig- enous peoples limits our ability to cre- ate ethical collection guidelines. Since the 1960s, the federal government has established some protections for Native American history and cultural patri- mony on Tribal and non-Tribal lands. Two interesting examples are the Ar- chaeological Resource Protection Act of 1979 (ARPA) and the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990 (NAGPRA). ARPA regulates the excavation of archaeological resources, - man life or activities... at least 100 years of age,” mandating resources be left in place unless the collector has permits from the appropriate federal land man- agement agency. Further, ARPA states that “non-fossilized and fossilized pa- leontological specimens, or any portion or piece thereof, shall not be considered archaeological resources...unless found in an archaeological context.” NAGPRA was passed to protect and return “hu- man remains, funerary objects, sacred objects, objects of cultural patrimony” to Native American peoples. On federal and reservation lands, researchers who - cant samples must have federal permits and have a detailed plan to return cul- turally important objects to the appro- priate Tribe within 90 days of excavat- ing. Importantly, researchers must be aware that fossils and other geological samples can be part of Native Ameri- cans’ cosmologies and cultural histories, and often exist within an archaeological context.
Legal precedent demonstrates that geological resources can be protected under these laws. An example involves the Willamette Meteorite, or “Tomano- wos” in the Clackamas Tribe’s ancestral language (a dialect of Upper Chinook). The Confederated Tribes of the Grand
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